I purchased a rod about 5 - 6 years ago for next to nothing, and it has sat in the basement for all of that time. I noticed it again this weekend while cleaning things. On the handle it is described as an Abu Garcia Fly Max 12'6" AFTM 9-10. It appears to be moderately fast action, and has a two handed grip.

It is of a fast enough action to permit overhead casting. I was thinking of trialing this rod of the beach for stripers in fall (Annapolis Royal / Nova Scotia). It is an hour or so away.

I think the easiest thing would be to trial some sort of shooting head line arrangement made of mill ends. Can anyone offer any suggestions such that I don't go through a steep learning curve and spend a fortune on lines ?

(prior to going nuts which will inevitably occcur anyway once the two handed bug has been caught but delay mon frere delay)

Buy a 100ft spool of 30 lb braided mono running line (9$).....uni knot to backing...loop @ front of running line.....cut off the head of an old 9-10 weight forward floater or intermediate @ the end of the head where the line begins to get skinny (between 30-40 ft depending on make of line) and attatch a loop to this end.....Loop to Loop, strip off 60 ft of runnning line and by god stretch out that mutha......get the head out of rod tip and let fly....should be good for @ least 85-100 feet once the loop plane is found (ps try letting a bit of line slip into final backcast and drift)

Then go and buy every two hander you can find on e-bay, splice heads from old DT's and spey lines bu some really nice LA reels for those fat floaters (maybe a scandi head or 3, become addicted to laying out effortless 120 ft + casts and get divorced.....